But given that I acknowledged that point at the outset, that cannot logically be the reason why you responded to my post.

It was because of the predator claim, which they are not predatory in my experience. My evidence was they don't advertise or seek out buyers. They are approached and asked to sell a product; that's not predatory. I gave the example of alcohol advertisement, etc.

Your counter to my point was anecdotal. You've seen family fall apart due to drugs and blame, in some part, the dealers. Ok. That's your take. My anecdotal evidence would be dealers that I deal with, who are intelligent, some college graduated, some blue collar workers, who are just looking to make cash on the side.

They're pretty bold, and apparently they must be making some decent money on the stuff.

Well copper is expensive as shit and when you steal a tone of the stuff you make some decent money.

current prices are around 4 euros a kilo so if you nab a tone of the stuff you get 4000 EURos minus the 10% the companies take for dealing with "scrap" metals and if your a gypsy you dont pay the income tax lol so your left with 3600 EUR or 4900 $ and since copper is heavy you get a tone peaty fast if you start emptying out warehouses

EDIT: lol crap used 2007 prices, now its almost double that. So 7000 EUR or 9500 $

Edited by frako, : No reason given.

Christianity, One woman's lie about an affair that got seriously out﻿ of hand

We needn't go anywhere. I stand by my position that in general, people who sell addictive, poison to addicts are predators. I don't care if those sellers are polished, educated, or nice. I have even less respect for people who do so despite the fact that they don't even need the money.

I agree that my story was anecdotal. But I know quite a few anecdotes.

Yeah, but like the guy in "Fat Head" points out, you'd probably kill yourself if you ate 5200 calories a day of garden salads. Be honest, what does McDonalds do that is so bad? Provide cheap food?

In the US, one in five children (one in FIVE!) face food insecurity because of the low incomes of their parents. That's one out of every five children who don't always get fed every day because their parents are making the choice between paying the rent and paying for food. Making food more expensive takes it out of the mouths of some nonzero number of children. Sure, McDonalds makes cheap-ass burgers out of low-quality beef that normally wouldn't make it to retail.

That's a good thing! I'm not saying McDonalds deserves a Nobel Prize but they're not forcing people to eat their crap, or eat 5500 calories of it every day for a month. The Morgan Spurlock fallacy is that if its bad to eat McDonalds three times a day for twenty days, it must be bad to eat it at all. But dosage is everything. Even water is poisonous in a large enough dose. Its also necessary for life.

Extremely aggressive marketing to children to get them hooked on their cheap unhealthy food, that is designed to be more desireable than nutritious, before they get a chance to make their own good eating habits. Parents can't compete with clowns during cartoons' commercials and totally kick-ass playpens (that I would still play in if they were bigger).

Its sleazy and intrusive. We've banned that sort of market from cigarette companies because their product are unhealthy, and I think the same case could be made against fast food.

Parents still have to make choices, and still have to pay.

A flippant response like that makes it sound like you don't have much experience with children...

McDonalds is easy for the parents too. And kids tend to get what they want. Spoiling their desires with cheap gimmicks like clowns and playpens could be called "evil" when your product is designed to be all taste and no nutrition while min/maxing cost and profit. Certainly, trying to get kids to eat healthier food would be a nobler cause.

The vast majority of food marketed to kids is nothing but sugar.

"you silly silly rabbit, trix are for kids!"

You're arguing "Is" versus "Ought".

and McDonald's is more healthy than a lot of other fast food places. I eat at McDonald's about 1-3 times per week, and over the past 5 months I have lost 40lbs.

there is nothing evil about marketing to children. Parents still have to make choices, and still have to pay. The vast majority of food marketed to kids is nothing but sugar.

quote:Marketing researchdevises ever more sophisticated means of reaching the public and shaping people’spreferences. This includes intensive advertising directed at young children. Lucy Hughes,the director of strategy for the large communications management company, InitiativeMedia, has done extensive research developing advertising strategies to exploit what shecalls the “Nag Factor.”2 The basic problem is simple: since children don’t have a lot ofmoney to spend themselves, how can advertisers get their parents to buy things for them?The solution is to help cultivate the art of nagging by modeling effective naggingbehavior in advertisements. In an interview, Hughes reports that “the way a child nags tothe parent will have an impact on whether or not the parent will buy the product.”3 Herresearch has demonstrated that “anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of purchaseswould not have occurred unless the children had nagged the parents.”4 So, instead ofdirecting advertisements for children’s products mainly at parents, children are thetargeted and shown how to nag for good results.